In fact Mavros is modelled exactly on the island of Lesbos, where Graham lived for a year early in his writing career. The house referred to was where he lived during that time, and the eponymous name of the house was not an invention. It is to be found near the village of Petra, "close enough to Turkey to hear the donkeys braying on the mainland". The mysterious bath referred to in the novel is the ancient hot spring at Eftalou; the church with the evil-eye mural is in the village of Molyvos; and the myth of the angel-militant in metal shoes is still widely believed on the island.

    The story follows thirty-something Emily who lives alone, humbly and happily, in a tiny apartment and on a meager income. She is the one that everyone counts on but no one goes out of their way to accommodate. Her fortune changes, however, and the second half chronicles her adaptation to her new life and the dangers that arise from those who stand to lose most from her new circumstances.

    James, prima ballerina of the Paris Opera Ballet and the people's saint, has spent seven years pretending. In the devastating aftermath of the Siege of Paris, she made a decision to protect her sister: she became the bland, sweet, pious “St. Amie” the ballet needed to restore its scandalous reputation. But when her first love reappears, and the ghosts of her past come back to haunt her, all her hard-fought safety is threatened.Dr. Benedict Moore has never forgotten the girl who helped him embrace life again after he almost lost his. Now, he's back in Paris after twelve years for a conference. His goals are to recruit promising new scientists, and, maybe, to see Amelie again. When he discovers she's in trouble, he's desperate to help her—after all, he owes her.When she finally agrees to let him help, they disguise their time together with a fake courtship. But reigniting old feelings is dangerous, especially when their lives are an ocean apart. Will they be able to make it out with their hearts intact?

    Life in post civil war Iowa was harsh, especially if you were Amish, but this was the only life Hannah Troyer had ever known. Not long after Hannah marries Benjamin Stoltz she and her husband agree to move to the untamed open plains of Kansas to help start a new community. In Kansas, Hannah is faced with dangers and hardships that are foreign to her. When she and one of her brothers are kidnapped by marauding Indians, Hannah is thrust into a nightmare that tests her strength and brings into question the love of those at the very core of her family circle. In the midst of this crisis, Hannah and her little brother discover an unlikely heroine. This heroine's acts of bravery and kindness will forever challenge everything Hannah has ever been taught.Books in this Series1. On the Winds of Change2. Forbidden Heritage

    Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox.The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection.The netsuke—drunken monks, almost-ripe plums, snarling tigers—were gathered by Charles Ephrussi at the height of the Parisian rage for all things Japanese. Charles had shunned the place set aside for him in the family business to make a study of art, and of beautiful living. An early supporter of the Impressionists, he appears, oddly formal in a top hat, in Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. Marcel Proust studied Charles closely enough to use him as a model for the aesthete and lover Swann in Remembrance of Things Past.Charles gave the carvings as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna; his children were allowed to play with one netsuke each while they watched their mother, the Baroness Emmy, dress for ball after ball. Her older daughter grew up to disdain fashionable society. Longing to write, she struck up a correspondence with Rilke, who encouraged her in her poetry.The Anschluss changed their world beyond recognition. Ephrussi and his cosmopolitan family were imprisoned or scattered, and Hitler’s theorist on the “Jewish question” appropriated their magnificent palace on the Ringstrasse. A library of priceless books and a collection of Old Master paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. But the netsuke were smuggled away by a loyal maid, Anna, and hidden in her straw mattress. Years after the war, she would find a way to return them to the family she’d served even in their exile.In The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves.

    It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree.Raised in those ruins and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly is a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. When a mysterious benefactor appears out her father's past to rescue her, she never looks back.Spanning half a century, On Agate Hill follows Molly’s passionate, picaresque journey through love, betrayal, motherhood, a murder trial―and back home to Agate Hill under circumstances she never could have imagined.

    The unlikely thief, former child prodigy Benjamin Ziskind, is convinced that the painting once hung in his parents' living room. This work of art opens a door through which we discover his family's startling history--from an orphanage in Soviet Russia where Chagall taught to suburban New Jersey and the jungles of Vietnam.

    Empty eyes – the empty eyes of her mother – stare right through her and Meara thinks her world has ended. She has no idea.Ebullient and feisty, eighteen-year-old Meara MacDonald lives an idyllic life with her family, on the mist-enfolded Isle of Skye, dreaming of the day when she will wed her heart, the gallant Duncan MacLeod. But fate has other plans and when Aunt Deirdre and Uncle Sloan seep into their midst, Meara’s family is taken, one-by-one, for reasons she discovers are both personal and nefarious. Mother is found dead, Da disappears, Duncan is taken by the Napoleonic Wars, Meara’s younger sister, Hannah – with child by Uncle Sloan – takes her own life and while Meara sleeps, her newborn son is snatched from her arms. Unable to reign in her spirit or her tongue, Meara finds herself catapulted from Scotland to a household steeped in mystery in Nova Scotia where, guided by her strength of will, she will fight her way back to the remains of her family; her heart and soul.**Warning ~ This novel is NOT suitable for the faint of heart. It is NOT a fluffy romance but a gritty tale of tragedy, betrayal and deception with true love, faith and justice. The dialogue throughout is authentic Scottish dialect with true-to-life swearing, violence and sex.Show more Show less

    She is single, sorted, happy – with a great job and a buzzy social and sex-life. All of this is threatened when she falls deeply in love with Dan, who is only 23. Jess, being older, recognises this as the real, precious thing – but in his immaturity, Dan does not. Unable to cope with the stigma of being with an older woman, he eventually leaves her. Ten years pass…Jess, who is still gorgeous at 50, is married now, with a child of her own.They meet again. The years fall away.This time, Dan understands – but is it too late?

    Injured FBI Special Agent Jon Stevens is back on the job, with a broken skull, a broken spirit and a ritualistic murder case only his talents can solve... And a vigilante begins targeting celebrities he deems worthy of his own savage brand of justice. What ties them all together? A revenge served so cold and so calculating that it uses everyone from opportunistic Russians, corrupt businessmen, an agoraphobic hacker--to a rock super star--to reach its goal. *The Rock Star* is the first thrilling book in the *Rock Series* trilogy.

    Based on the true story of how Israel's Mossad agents stole three tonnes of Mirage fighter drawings following General de Gaulle's disastrous ban on the supply of these aircraft that were vital to Israel's defence.

    Handsome, charismatic, a powerful athlete and oarsman, David Sparsholt seems at first unaware of the effect he has on others--especially on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist, himself also destined to become a writer. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove from the action: a place of transience and uncertainty, the fears and rigors of the blackout both encouraging and concealing unexpected liaisons. Between these two young men of very different backgrounds an unusual friendship develops, one whose consequences will unfold over the many years that follow.Alan Hollinghurst's masterly new novel evokes the intimate lives of three generations of Sparsholts in a sequence of vividly rendered episodes: a childhood holiday in Cornwall; eccentric social gatherings at the Dax family home; the adventures of David's son Johnny, in pursuit of love and a career as a painter in 1970s London. Changes in taste, morality, and private life are explored in a group portrait of friends brought together by art, literature, and love. Champions of the Modern live to see modernity itself becoming history, while more personal, life-changing crises and scandals--including that which gives this novel its title--recede into the past, leaving their ambiguous traces. And as gay men and women live in increasing freedom and openness, and the gay scene evolves into new forms and possibilities, The Sparsholt Affair becomes a meditation on human transience, even as it expresses the countervailing longing for permanence and continuity.Witty, tender, epic in scope yet rich in observation, The Sparsholt Affair is a dazzling new work of fiction by a writer justly hailed by the Wall Street Journal as "one of the best novelists at work today."

    In 1947, American historian and veteran of WWII, Martin Mitchell, wins a Fulbright Fellowship to document the end of British rule in India. His wife, Evie, convinces him to take her and their young son along, hoping a shared adventure will mend their marriage, which has been strained by war.But other places, other wars. Martin and Evie find themselves stranded in a colonial bungalow in the Himalayas due to violence surrounding the partition of India between Hindus and Muslims. In that house, hidden behind a brick wall, Evie discovers a packet of old letters, which tell a strange and compelling story of love and war involving two young Englishwomen who lived in the same house in 1857. Drawn to their story, Evie embarks on a mission to piece together her Victorian mystery. Her search leads her through the bazaars and temples of India as well as the dying society of the British Raj. Along the way, Martin’s dark secret is exposed, unleashing a new wedge between Evie and him. As India struggles toward Independence, Evie struggles to save her marriage, pursuing her Victorian ghosts for answers.Bursting with lavish detail and vivid imagery of Calcutta and beyond, The Sandalwood Tree is a powerful story about betrayal, forgiveness, fate, and love.

    These collective settlements have been written about extensively over the years: The kibbutz has been the subject of many sociological studies, and has been praised as the only example in world history of entire communities attempting, voluntarily, to live in total equality. But there's a dark side to the kibbutz, which has been criticized in later years, mainly by children who were raised in these communities, as an institution which victimized its offspring for the sake of ideology.In this spare and lucid memoir, Neeman--a child of the kibbutz--draws on the collective memory of hundreds of thousands of Israelis who grew up in a kibbutz during their height and who intimately share their memories with her.We Were the Future is more than merely a compelling personal account of growing up in the kibbutz movement; it is an unstintingly honest examination of the perils of pioneering and a new lens through which to see the history of Israel.

    They are not what they seem, but colleagues from a technologically advanced future, posing as a doctor and his spinster sister. While Rachel and Liam aren’t the first team of time travelers, their mission is the most audacious yet: meet, befriend, and steal from Jane Austen. Carefully selected and rigorously trained by The Royal Institute for Special Topics in Physics, disaster-relief doctor Rachel and actor-turned-scholar Liam have little in common excerpt their extraordinary circumstances. Circumstances that call for Rachel to stifle her independent nature and let Liam take the lead as they infiltrate Austen’s circle via her favorite brother, Henry. But diagnosing Jane’s fatal illness and obtaining an unpublished novel hinted at in her letters pose enough of a challenge without the convolutions of living a lie. While her friendship with Jane deepens and her relationship with Liam grows complicated, Rachel fights to reconcile her true self with the constrictions of 19th century society. As their portal to the future prepares to close, Rachel and Liam struggle with their directive to leave history as they found it…however heartbreaking that proves.©2017 Kathleen A. Flynn (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers